Three Deaths Cut into Baseball’s Early-Season Excitement
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
There tends to be no shortage of excitement surrounding the start of baseball season and one of the country’s favorite fantasy pastimes. Unfortunately, baseball and its fans have gotten a heavy dose of reality lately.
Just days after a drunken driver took the life of young Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart, Major League Baseball has to deal with the deaths of Phillies voice Harry Kalas and former Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych.
Kalas — a Ford C. Frick Award winner as a broadcaster, longtime radio and television voice of the Phillies and a narrator for NFL Films for more than 30 years — clearly had the deepest and broadest impact simply by virtue of his career’s length and breadth. The sheer number of mentions and tributes available a day after his sudden passing makes clear that the loss of Kalas stretches beyond Phillies fans.
ESPN put together a nice video obituary with narration from former Philadelphia Inquirer writer Jayson Stark, as well as a written tribute by former Phillie and current Baseball Tonight analyst John Kruk.
Of course, with Harry the K, everything starts in Philly, and Philly.com — the online home for both the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News — devoted lots of coverage to the man who helped bring generations of fans to the city’s baseball team.
Plenty of fantasy folks also took the opportunity to pay tribute to an icon. KFFL’s Nicholas Minnix, who grew up near Philly, remembers a voice from his childhood. Fantasy Baseball Dugout opened it’s Kalas post with a few of Kalas’ more memorable calls.
Despite the prevalence of Kalas coverage, though, the deaths of Fidrych and Adenhart certainly haven’t gone undetected. Like all of us, Sporting News’ Stan McNeal was struck by the past week’s news and remembers being in Florida the spring after Fidrych, “The Bird,” flew onto the scene as a rookie phenom. (Anyone not familiar with Fidrych or convinced that rookie pitchers aren’t worth your time in fantasy should check out that amazing 1976 line.)
Finally, Adenhart — who’s death might be the most tragic because of his age (22) and the cause — has an online forum for rememberance at the site of his hometown paper, The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md.
Obviously, it will take a long time for many touched by these individuals, their careers and their lives to deal with the loss. As fantasy baseball players, baseball fans and human beings, let’s acknowledge the departed, remember the good times and hope with all we have that this marks the lowest possible point of the 2009 baseball season.
